The Tenacity of Lathenil
by Deplaisance de la Nuit
Summary: Vignettes from the life of Lathenil of Sunhold - the lone, half-mad, implacable Altmer who, by sheer force of will, proved one of the greatest foes the Thalmor had ever known. (Oblivion/Skyrim, with an emphasis on the former.)
1. The Falsehood of History

When Carhenil had learned his son had left the seminary at the Firsthold Academy half a moon in, his mind flew from image to image in rage and worry. He saw Lathenil living on the money of some poor innocent lovelorn, blank-eyed in a skooma den, dead in a ditch.

He did not envision his son still in Firsthold, on speaking terms with the second scholar he'd asked, hunched in the basement of the great library with his right hand dipping in and out of a bowl of seawater and his left copying out a brown bit of parchment that might have crumbled with a hasty touch.

It was with a distinct confusion, then, that he approached the table. "Lathenil... Master Varellis informed me-"

Lathenil jumped, leaving a tremendous blot on the new paper. "I – I never wrote, yes! I didn't want you to think poorly of me! I only wanted- now I've ruined the bloody sheet," he muttered, out of an evident desire to avoid looking Carhenil in the eye.

"I... yes, I do think less of you. For refraining from the correspondence. But of all the things you could be doing after vanishing... I will find anger, Lathenil. But not now. Varellis said you'd stormed from the seminary six weeks ago. What exactly are you doing here?"

He took a deep breath, steeling himself. A flush was coming steadily into his cheeks, always a sign that he'd turned something over enough in his mind that he would not be moved. And the boy _was_ all but grown; perhaps it was time Carhenil ceased the futile clash.

"I took the liberty of assuming that you sent me here to learn history, and not specifically to study history at a seminary. Requesting old tomes from across the span of the Empire actually saves me some of the gold you sent me with, and my piecemeal work as a copyist earns me more."

"What fault did you find with the seminary?" Carhenil hoped he sounded more curious than confrontational. "Master Varellis has the most comprehensive course in all of Tamriel; I've heard no one disagree."

Lathenil gave a derisive snort. "Comprehensive is one way to put it. Incomprehensible is another. We began with the Red Diamond War, and for the first two days, we studied Potema the Wolf Queen. Do you want to know what featured on that comprehensive curriculum in those two days?"

"Let the goose fly," said Carhenil after a moment.

Lathenil had apparently prepared not an arrow, but a volley. "I learned that either she was the worst tyrant Cyrodiil had ever known, or her despotry was fabricated after the fact by Cephorus. That her downfall was overcaution, or recklessness, or that she coddled Uriel III to incompetence, or left him to fend for himself. I haven't yet heard that she was never really defeated, but I'll lay there's a historian somewhere who says so. She was a Septim, a bastard, a vampire, part-daedra, a composite character entirely.

"And as for the contemporary figures, they all have flaws that make them unreliable if you wish to see them. Maradora the Icebound, for instance, can't be trusted because she had a Nord for a husband, or else because she wasn't a Nord herself. And the latter-day historians –"

"_Mind the seawater!_" Lathenil's right hand had jarred the edge of the bowl.

He cringed a bit to make a fool of himself, then put the bowl aside and dried his hand on his vest, evidently preferring gesticulation to comfort. "Well. Of the later historians, one was a skooma-eater, another abandoned his children, another had a Khajiit for a mistress, and of course most of them are hypocrites. Hypocrisy tends to happen, among people with strong opinions, and it's easy to disbelieve a hypocrite."

The look he gave his father now was nothing short of plaintive. "Can that be called history? It's nothing but a series of preening, self-blinkered, brawling scholars, lauded as often as not because they defy all sense, and if anyone there, never mind Varellis, is concerned with the matter of _what actually happened,_ then they failed to mention it over the course of a fortnight."

Carhenil shook his head gently. "That is not the purpose of studying history, son. The truth of the past can be glimpsed through a haze, but it can never be seized. I sent you to hear the words of the great scholars of Tamriel and of Summerset. To know not the past but the people who recorded it, to draw from them as you see fit."

"No." Lathenil's eyes burned fever-bright now. "If knowledge isn't meant to be certain, what makes it better to act upon than ignorance? Fa - your notion of history is so vague as to be _worthless._ But history itself – that can be worth a great deal. It is a navigator's chart, marking routes, and harbors, and treacherous reefs. And the fact that no chart can be entirely accurate is no reason to draw deep, placid waters where rocks lie just beneath the surface. Beneath the rough map, there is a real coastline, and every mortal plies it."

His son's intensity could raise the hairs on his neck, yet perhaps there was an opening here for reason. "I see you _have _taken an interest in the subject, then. And if history is your path, you must have patience with the others who walk it."

Lathenil blinked, jarred loose from his tirade. "I'm agitated, not _foreordained_. I study only because I gave you my word. No, history won't be my path if there's anything I can do about it."

"Ah, I didn't ask about your studies. What _have_ you determined about the Wolf Queen?"

"Certainly a usurper, but of legitimate birth," said Lathenil without interest. "Genuinely backed her son, whose defeat was too sound to be helped by personal qualities one way or the other. The cannibalism is almost certainly Cyrodiilic propaganda, but even before she took up necromancy, she _did_ impale prisoners of war so that they died over the course of days, so I've no idea why they had to embellish. Her fatal flaw is debatable, but if I had to argue, it would be that she lacked legitimacy in the public eye. Nothing that hasn't been said before by the layman, but as far as I can tell, it _is _the truth, so there's no need to get creative."

"Well, that's not bad for a start. Why so adamant that you won't pursue this line?"

Lathenil smiled wanly. "The way I see it, there are two sorts of historians. There are the ones who record the history they see, and there are the ones who guess at the history they didn't. I think myself a better guesser than most, but then, who doesn't? No, we have too many guessers already. And only a fool wants to live through a history worth recording." He let his hand sink back into the soothing bowl. "If you wish me to press on at Firsthold Academy, may I take up Alteration? Magisters are allowed much less room for chicanery."

Carhenil's stroke of inspiration seemed long overdue, but he welcomed it. "Lathenil, that wrist - is there any way you can pay a scribe to take some of the edge off?"

"Not if I intend to eat for the next month. And the left's nearly good enough for the library's coin by now, besides – once the left wrist smarts, the right is usable again."

"Then have done with this piecemeal work, as it evidently shortsells you. If you wish to study Alteration after what you've done, then find work as a scribe and _pay your way_." Carhenil wished the boy might refrain from injuring himself simply to prove a point, but he knew him better than that. So he only added, "I'd buy a few restoration potions, too, if I were you."


	2. Knowledge of the Sleeper

Cool water. Little pinpricks of cool water, no apparent pattern.

The smell of rust, faint on the breath of a fresh breeze.

The sound – the sound of rain upon flagstones. That was the first conscious thought: it was raining. Raining, from a white-grey sky.

Lathenil looked out to the horizon. He turned to every other horizon. As far as he looked across the sky, he could see only the soft grey clouds of midday Summerset, bearing a light, cool rain.

He heard a mad laughter in his ears – felt it convulse his chest – heard a rush of footsteps behind him, strangely insignificant – felt the water on his face warm and swell – began to fall toward the ground, but felt a pair of arms bring him up short.

"Lathenil," said a woman's voice, one that he felt ought to be more familiar to him. "Can you hear me?"

"Phynaster..." he whispered, emptied of the laughter.

"Yes," said the voice tremulously. "The gods heard our cries. Raised heroes to deliver us. Now they've given my brother back to me."

He turned his head in a flash. It truly was Cilandrin. He had feared sorely for her, he knew – _Sunhold had early warning, _the guard had said, with the weariness of one who'd given tidings to a thousand as desperate as Lathenil had been._ If they aren't with the Summerguard, it's almost certain they're here. _There, in the Crystal Tower. Cilandrin was the only one left outside the keep, the only one in danger.

His mind's ear heard again the rising roar through the branches, imagined his father-

"Lathenil! Stay with me! We're safe... the daedra are gone..."

He forced himself to look into Cilandrin's round face. "I was there," he said. "Crystal-Like-Law. They brought me across the strait from Firsthold – the runeway, before the daedra found it – but I was kept to the Firsthold quarter. I never saw..."

"There'll be time for that, brother. But now, we go back to the shrine and bear them the good news."

Lathenil, in some sort of half-automatic reaction to the notion of being hosted, saw the state of his clothing and was amazed at the things his nose must have become inured to. "Not before I see that I'm cleaned up first," he muttered, disgusted with himself.

"There, you see?" said the Stendarr priestess who laid out the table, beaming in a satisfied way that, as the faint lines on her face were beginning to show, ran counter to her usual expression. "The clear sky is a welcome sight, but a cool rain has more arguments to make than by sight alone."

"Very well, Fiorana," said the youthful male mage beside her, allowing himself the first roll of softloaf. "I'll allow my studies haven't spared me much time for Restoration; I commend you that strength."

Cilandrin, smiling faintly, shook her head in a kind of disbelief. "Still, it wasn't precisely the first time I'd tried her theory. And it was all we could do at first to persuade you we weren't dremora. But it worked. That's the point."

"I suppose I ran?" said Lathenil bitterly.

"Well – yes," admitted Cilandrin. "But you didn't have so much as a dagger. It's lucky you did run."

"And the lack of a dagger spared us too much trouble when we managed to close in on you," said Fiorana drily.

No weapon, no, and nothing but scholar's robes on his back – at the Tower, they'd requisitioned everything of utility. But he had some power of destruction. In itself, it wasn't much, but he could have filled the ranks. In not fleeing, he might have given others heart who _could _measurably fight, and...

_This tower will stand so long as our courage does,_ he remembered the Sage Rynandor assuring them a week before the onslaught. Yet how quick they had been to cast aside the crucial qualification! There stood Rynandor at the battlements covering the Queen's passage to safety; that way Lathenil had glanced for one moment of guilty hesitation, and sped away as fast as his feet could carry him.

"I might have tipped the balance," he said, an acrid lump in his chest. "The Crystal Tower might still stand. But _I ran._"

The mage stared so that he needed effort to swallow before he spoke. "Don't be absurd. That battle was lost before it began, never mind any question of it hanging on a hair's breadth."

"Beridor, by the way," said Fiorana, before another silence could yawn beneath him. "You've been introduced before, but I don't suppose it registered. He's a student of the Ancient Magic – conducting ley line research."

Lathenil felt himself drift into pedantry and wholly welcomed his return to that realm. "Which ancient magic is that, exactly?"

Beridor grimaced. "Actually, the proper name is _Dawn Magic – _the magic of the Dawn Era – but needless to say, we prefer to avoid that term until we can be assured the Camoran heresy is thoroughly rooted out."

He felt a nudge from Cilandrin. The nudge of a plate of herbs and fresh cheese, to be precise. He must have been eating like a starving beast till now, yet at this meal he'd managed to forget food entirely. "That's what they used in Lady Arraneyla's circle, Lathenil," she said, her smile having gone from distant to downright exuberant. "That's what closed the rifts."

Lathenil frowned; he needed to sort something out before this conversation ran away with him. "Camoran, though. I remember someone – at the Crystal Tower–" (he turned his mind forcefully away from the path it was taking)– "I remember someone making some sort of scholarly point about the Hart-King and his mistress. All the frantic asking and guessing in the Atrium – I suppose it stood out. Does that have anything to do with – with the daedra?"

"Ah!" said Beridor. "Forgive me, Cilandrin – perhaps he _is_ as sharp as you say after all." (How often _did _this fellow hasten to the conclusion that other people were dullards, Lathenil wondered.) "Yes, precisely – their son, Mankar Camoran, led the Mythic Dawn – I suppose that's 'the red-robes' to you," he added irritably.

"Yes," said Lathenil, recalling one of the favorite books of his youth, making sense of things he'd merely accepted as oddities before now. "The Hart-King did after all traffick with daedra, didn't he?"

"Debatable," said Beridor. "Derived from a popular work which is little more than a fanciful horror story with a historic veneer. And it certainly gets one crucial point wrong: the Camoran Usurper was of course a Bosmer of Valenwood, but by all accounts, his son had the look of an Altmer. His mother, by _reliable _sources, not only gave him his appearance, but – crucially – had the blood of men in her veins."

"Er – crucially?" Lathenil supposed it must have something to do with Mankar Camoran's creed, but he couldn't see what.

"I should say so. Almost invariably, the Mythic Dawn agents we've captured share this foundational flaw, when they're not men or beastmen outright. It's useful to know, isn't it, with so many still in our midst?"

Lathenil gave Cilandrin an exasperated look.

"Yes, brother," she said with good humor, "he _is _one of those Thalmor headcases, but so is Lady Arraneyla at that. I can't hold it against him _too _strongly."

After a moment's hesitation, Lathenil decided to let the matter lie; after all, he did have several questions more pressing.

First: "Well, then. What of the sealing of the rifts?"

And, savoring the taste of the food for the first time in weeks if not months, he let himself be swept away in the current of conversation, putting no hand to the rudder, so grateful to be out from under the fiery sky and the specter of Destruction that he saw no need to consider where they might be bound.


	3. Near to Treason

The rebuilding and resettlement of the Holds continued apace, with every sign they would be successful. Despite the embargo – or perhaps even because of it, Rynandor allowed; he didn't know for certain the Empire's desired policy and it might be an unwittingly harmful one – trade was now nearly what it was before the first rift opened. Life in Summerset was not only celebrated, but actually _lived._

One celebration took the form of a painting in the palace of Alinor, showing Rynandor's defense of the Crystal Tower. Absurdly, it portrayed him in the ceremonial top-knot braid, which glinted silverly atop an overblown Antus Pinder pose – as though the first thing he had done after waking to a thousand dying screams was fix his hair. But that was the topknot he wore now. If Fintar and the rest of Arranelya's vaunted circle dealt so thoroughly and effectively in image, he'd be a fool to forgo the field entirely.

For, with the Isles stabilizing, it was at last the appropriate time for Rynandor to speak some uncomfortable truths he had to this point kept firmly under his cloak.

Not of his visions. His visions could, he knew, be prevented, and when last he'd prayed to Auri-El that he dream the future of Summerset, he'd seen only a confused panoply, more worrisome for the breadth of the whole than for any of the parts. A patch of tundra where two armies of men had fought a ruinous battle. A Breton watchman running wild-eyed for the shore. A tall figure in a gold-threaded black robe, walking what looked to be a bridge on Lake Rumare. A thin and haggard Dunmer archer, presented with silver arrows. A Khajiiti noblewoman, raising her arms in an ecstatic gesture of supplication.

And one image that _did _have a clear bearing on the future of Summerset. High Queen Faltana, dead, her body lashed to a post in Alinor Square.

No, if he was to change the course, it would do him no good to begin like that.

And there would be no betrayal of state secrets, either. There was no surer way than that to fall on the sword of his own rhetoric. But _he _knew, and that was enough to put fire in his heart. It was enough to convince him that all the varied and distant fear and death he saw in his visions had the Thalmor at the root.

_The daedra don't come near because they _know_ an assault would be fruitless, _he had heard one expert at guesswork tell another in the Sunhold refugees' quarters. And that expert had guessed right. There was power in the daedric siege engine to lay low any wall, yes – any but the walls of Crystal-Like-Law.

As a certainty, this was known to but a few. Rynandor knew. Dagon surely knew. High Commander Fintar knew, for the Chamber of the Wise had entrusted him with the protection of the stone at the heart of the Tower.

And, though Fintar knew in no uncertain terms the grave importance of his duty, the Mythic Dawn – not the most careful of sinister societies, when blood was in the air – had slipped through his defenses without raising the smallest of alarms. And even as in the night, the daedra came with their captives, there was no word that there was anything amiss with the stone, that the Crystal Tower was as vulnerable as any mundane structure.

No charitable option presented itself. The case was black, or it was blacker. Yet Fintar, swanning about without a trace of remorse, collecting accolades and position like peaches from the orchard, had Arranelya's full corroboration, and that of the other Thalmor among the Wise.

(What a phrase that was. Rynandor had had much opportunity to lament the presumptiveness of the term "Wise" for those whose ancestors happened to be privy to the highest secrets, but the very idea of Thalmor wisdom trumped them all.)

But in claiming they had put an end to the Anguish, they had overstretched themselves. Rynandor had been presented with a small demonstration of Dawn Magic a few years ago – a group of mages had changed the shape of a hill, and brought lightning down upon the new pinnacle. Cardinal elements, they had explained. Primordial forces. Certainly, a power to be reckoned with – but, as practiced by mortals, not a power that stirred a blade of bloodgrass outside Nirn. This, then, was Rynandor's staging point; the rest would become apparent as a consequence, if at all.

From the desk, he took up his notes and his _Trials of St. Alessia. _All was now in order. As he ascended his doorstep onto the hill, he inhaled sharply and had to spend a moment leaning against the rail; despite the healer's best efforts, his hip and left leg had never fully recovered from being crushed in the Tower's collapse. He'd gone further distances with far greater setbacks than that, though; after the moment had passed, he set out as briskly as he could for the ampitheatre of Lillandril.

His speech at Lillandril had indeed provoked a murmur. Cloudrest, having stood safely apart from the Oblivion Crisis by the narrow paths carved right up to its gate, gave him a polite but indifferent reception. When he spoke at Firsthold, though, there began to be talk of action: contesting Thalmor appointments to councils and captainships.

But thus far, that was the pinnacle and from there, he was only losing ground. Since Firsthold, things seemed to keep falling away.

High Priestess Narinelle of the Grand Shrine of Auri-El had been arrested in a tavern brawl which she initiated – the evidence was indisputable and she gave no excuses – and this caused more than a few foolish wits to wonder whether this instability passed to Rynandor, who had always taken her spiritual advice very gravely.

The Cyrodiilic Saint Alessia, having put an end to the Merethic Era, was anathema to a handful even outside the Thalmor, to the degree that they refused to believe, or perhaps even hear, the first word of any work that portrayed her in a positive light. This handful (abetted, quietly but with a poison-dart accuracy, by Arranelya herself) began to forewarn audiences of his dangerous ideas.

The greatest disaster lay entirely at his feet. Rynandor had succumbed – and the struggle was a short one – to telling his High Queen everything he knew, but he did it without preparation, in a rush and a jumble. And now, hers was among the loudest of the voices questioning the sanctity of his mind.

But if he was in the middle of a morass of folly, there was no sense to stopping there. Thus it was that this evening, he addressed the people of Sunhold to parry the charges. (In truth, most of them were strangers to the city – resettlers from other parts, and the subtler strangers who were the new-forged veterans – but they would be true people of Sunhold soon enough.)

His reception promised to be a chilly one. For one thing, Fintar was scheduled to speak after he was, having the last word of the evening. As there were bread and drink and bards scheduled in the Pavilion before he spoke, Rynandor walked among the crowd, not finding much reassurance in the knowing whispers and sudden silences that followed him about the room.

"Well, all right, assume that he _is _crazy, then," said one voice that didn't trouble to suppress itself. "Would that change what I saw? Does it wipe all the Sigil Stones in the Summerguard halls from existence? Does it mean that Dawn Magic _does _have power over an entire Oblivion plane, or that – what, did Rynandor plant a text every Cyrodiilic schoolchild knows centuries in advance, on the off chance daedra would try killing us all someday? He didn't make it up, Fiorana, I studied it myself."

"Lathenil, if you're actually suggesting..."

As Rynandor looked to the source of the first voice – a short, slight, barely-grown mer with buggy eyes – something happened that hadn't happened to him for more than a century. A waking vision. He saw this mer, impeccable of clothing but hollow of face, dropping to kneel before Ocato of Firsthold with a gratitude so immense it looked to cause him pain.

The Lathenil before him, however, paled and crumpled at his prolonged gaze. "Oh, gods. You remember."

"Don't be ridiculous; he heard you talk about him," snapped the priestess he had been speaking to. "He fled the Tower and thinks he could have saved it all by his armorless self," she explained as Lathenil made gestures of useless protest. "And that you had enough spare time to pick out his face in the crowd."

"Do you wish me to condemn you, that you still live?" said Rynandor, deciding to take the plunge. One thing was certain, after all: Ocato, first servant of Uriel VII, would never see eye-to-eye with anyone who equated humans with the muck on their boots. "No, the mer I see is no coward. I see resourcefulness, and loyalty, and above all, _tenacity. _I see a mer who pursues a thankless-seeming task long after anyone else would have given up hope, and thus reaps a harvest that no one else could have realized."

Lathenil stared, his eyes more protuberant than ever. Finally: "I'm... _very_ sure that you've mistaken me for someone else, magister. But – but that's not to say I intend to disappoint you," he added, and Rynandor knew he meant it to the core.

The beginning of Rynandor's speech was greeted – indeed, assailed – by a cavalcade of catcalls.

"Can't stand anyone else getting the glory, can you?"

"Keep raving! My pleasure!"

"You want to finish what Alessia started?"

"Why so soft on Camoran's boys?"

"Sorry! I can't hear you! Sorry! Say that again?"

Rynandor shook his head at the inanity he was expected to rise to and cast a spell to amplify his voice. (This had the irritating side effect of amplifying every other noise he made as well, from his footsteps to the rustling of his papers, but he could bear with that.) "It appears many present are reluctant to hear my arguments before they refute them. If there are any academy staff here this evening, I would have them take note for admissions purposes."

The catcallers fell back into silence or their private conversations, to scattered applause.

"Well, as you are apparently aware, I am Sage Rynandor of Lillandril. A veritable atronach of madness or political scheming; I'm not certain which. The trouble is that my story came second – for while Arranelya and the rest were telling of their greatness and being showered in laurels, I deemed rebuilding a higher priority.

"Many of you, who have come to Sunhold in order to-"

Evidently he wasn't the only one who had learned the amplifying spell, for he began to be shouted down anew.

"Rebuilder, you say! Can you bring back my sisters in the Tower?"

"Justice for the dead of Sunhold!"

"Gods' blood, why is _this _bastard the one to survive?"

Rynandor slumped against the podium, feeling the throbbing pain in his leg. Next, they'd doubtless accuse him of losing the Tower himself.

No. Phynaster save them, that _was _next. So few had survived that disaster. He was one. Commander Fintar was another. It was, to so many, one mer's word against another's – and they'd already decided which word to believe.

If he could even make himself heard, what could he say against this calumny? Anticipating an accusation only made it all the stronger. To speak of the stone was to betray the most sacred laws of the Wise.

So he allowed the accusers to shout uncontested until they subsided, gave them his condolences, and pressed on with the rest of the speech as he'd planned it. Though further efforts to drown him out were perfunctory, he fared no better at persuasion than he had in those first few minutes.

Then Fintar took the floor. His speech was short, succinct and unimpeded.

"On behalf of the High Queen and her council – under the Blood-Iron Provision –"

Rynandor turned back, found Lathenil's eyes – easily, for the youth was midway through getting to his feet – and shook his head emphatically.

"Rynandor of Lillandril is to be sequestered, pending exile, on charges of disrupting what fragile peace has emerged from the Anguish."

The Blood-Iron Provision meant that no one would know his place of detention, and he would not be permitted to mount his own defense. They were terms meant for the remnant of the Mythic Dawn, but there was nothing between Rynandor and the letter of the law.

Then he was exiled. So be it.

"Keep an eye to the truth," he said by way of farewell – the enchantment had worn off, but his voice carried in the awed hush of the moment. "Mark what the Thalmor do next. Remember me."

And then two soldiers of the Summerguard were at his side, escorting him away.

He was kept in impenetrable darkness, his magic powerless. He himself did not know where he was. All he had for company was the taste of prison rations and the sound of his own voice.

His voice, which entreated Auri-El one last time for visions.

The visions had shifted somewhat. Some had gone away, and others come in their place. A gibbet being readied on the White-Gold Tower. Corsairs locked in combat with Hammerfell warships. A young Nord with prematurely white hair, which he darkened with trembling fingers. Five mer gathered around a rough stone table in a rough stone house, a hushed intonation on their lips and smoldering fire in their eyes. And in place of the Redguard man he had seen before, it was Lathenil who presented the Dunmer archer with those silver arrows.

The course had changed – but he couldn't say if it was for the better. And whatever changes had been wrought upon the future, the High Queen was still dead in Alinor Square.


	4. Sight of the Wakeful

**The Sight of the Wakeful**

_7 Sun's Dawn, 3E434_

_(The very date is uncertain. If Rynandor's more theoretical hypotheses hold, then there is a chance we are in a new dynastic era. But, in the absence of certainty, probability weighs against it.)_

_I once held – indeed I still hold – that only a fool dreams of living through a history worth writing about. But now that such a history is upon me, then the folly is in a failure to record it._

_It will, alas, be an incomplete record. I fear the necessity of the moment trumps my debt to posterity. Should this journal fall into the wrong hands, I can jeopardize no plan that has not been realized, and I can implicate nobody but myself._

The six little marbles converged on one another – they hit one another dead center – as they ricocheted outward in perfect symmetry, Lathenil rushed to mark the maximum distance of one of the copies, only to realize as the copies vanished that they hadn't quite hit in the dead center of the _table._

"What _are _you doing?" Fiorana was at the doorway; evidently she had grown impatient with the experiment and come up from the entrance hall.

"Toying with Mysticism," said Lathenil."I call this one Radial Motion – see, it captures the form and motion in an area about the size of my fingernail, then mirrors it sixfold."

"Useful?"

"Not in the slightest. Perhaps with tweaks – but you know how mystic spells are about being tweaked. You were at the Pavilion; you'd understand. It's a siege, almost. I need ways to amuse myself behind the barricade."

"Right," said Fiorana, pinching between her eyebrows. "How goes that project with the, er, decorative cipher?"

"It's not _quite_ finished," said Lathenil, but not shamefully; he had at least made headway for once. "I think I have a good notion as to how we get a full message on the belts while still concealing the very existence of a message. It won't represent letters, but _vowel-consonant pairs. _Just the sounds. So, for instance, with T-H –" He crouched down on the floor, where he'd moved the ink and paper for the Mysticism experiment, and drew a set of four elaborate curlicues. "That's La-dhe-ni-il – though of course we won't be using our names."

"In the cipher that isn't supposed to be recognizable as a message, you mean."

"Can't be too careful."

"And if you have three consonants together at once?"

"Pretend there's a schwa sound before the ones that don't get paired."

Fiorana raised an eyebrow. "Exactly how soon do you expect us to memorize all this?"

Lathenil had expected to announce these circumstances at the meeting proper, and thus couldn't prevent himself from cringing now. "In... in three months' time. That's when we'll be able to fund the expedition. We'd better get down to the parlor; I'd rather not need to repeat myself to the others."

Before getting to his feet he pocketed the marble, noticing to his dismay that it had a chink in it.

Shasten and Melthis were engaged in a friendly-but-spirited debate about whether "The Fortunate Gambler" should be sung to showcase a bard's talents or sung so the audience could take part. (Melthis took the former side, possibly because her voice was poor even by crowd standards.) Andrathel was staring at Shasten with an intensity that would be disturbing if Lathenil didn't know he was an artist, otherwise bad with faces, and, thus, committing the smith's appearance to memory on their first meeting.

"All right," called Fiorana, "no more stalling, down to business."

Lathenil sat up on the hardest leather chair and cleared his throat. "Well, friends, we've made progress. The ship's name is the _Falconbranch. _A small vessel – it simply doesn't have the capacity to supply a long voyage – which essentially narrows down our field of search to the Gold Coast."

"It's not Hammerfell," said Andrathel at once. "They haven't taken exiles for decades. If you think _we're_ ill-used by Elsweyr's exile policy, try living entirely on warm sands."

"And if the Thalmor dictated the destination," said Melthis, speaking to her fingers as she generally did when she had to volunteer a conjecture, "I don't think they'd choose Valenwood. Trying to live up to their namesake, don't you know. Every Thalmor forum I go to in Alinor these days, they're always trumping up the Bosmer role in Tamriel – as though we need trumping up!" She shook her head in disgust. "I know a few Bosmer who don't see through it, even. Point is, they want favor from those _other _Aldmeri people, so there's not a chance they'd be setting Rynandor loose in their midst."

"Perhaps," said Lathenil, "they _didn't _dictate the destination. After all, the ship they chose has a crew of old hands, very honest workmen, make it a custom to knock discipline into the reprobates of the seas one captured corsair at a time – these corsairs are humans and Khajiit, mostly. Not my first choice for a crew, if I were Fintar." (And if he never saw a bottle of liquor again after the harborside inquiries required to determine this, it would be too soon.) "They don't control everything, we have to remember. They aim for key points, but there's a paucity of actual Thalmor to cover them. Even so, Melthis is probably right. We'll need to confirm it, but in the meantime, we can operate under the assumption that it's Anvil."

"All right," said Shasten. "What about funds, have we made any progress there?"

Lathenil nodded, and took a deep breath. "I've got that in hand now, too. I'll be selling this place in three months' time – I'll be commiserating with all Sunhold about my gambling debts, maybe losing a few rounds of dice for show, and no one will be surprised when I get desperate for coin."

"This house!" said Shasten, impressed. "I take it you brought Cilandrin into the fold!"

Of course someone had to twist the knife before he plunged it. Lathenil squeezed his eyes shut, felt his fingernails digging into his palms. "No. In three months, she'll be married to Beridor. She's sailing with his family off the Alinor coast as we speak."

"Er – Beridor?" said Andrathel.

"Thalmor," said Melthis. "Not high-ranking, but steeped deep. And not much of a prize if he weren't Thalmor – arrogant twit; I've studied with him in Alinor."

"Now, now," said Fiorana. "Arrogant twittery is a Thalmor mainstay; you can't assume they'd remain arrogant twits if separated from-" Lathenil's eyes, which were burning in his sockets, met hers, and she abruptly snapped her mouth shut.

"But surely you've spoken to her!" said Shasten in shock.

"Of course I spoke to her!" snapped Lathenil.

Futile, cold, stammering efforts at persuasion, rapidly degenerating into his shouting at her retreating back whether Rynandor meant anything to her, that she would know better if she'd been at the Pavilion that night, that Beridor was a presumptive up-jump who had no idea what he was getting involved with – at best!... And she shouted back that the bronze in his cheeks only showed he couldn't be reasoned with. That she was ashamed even to mention his existence to Beridor's family (there was that blessing, at least,) and why _shouldn't_ he be pleased with Beridor, he always encouraged her to go for the intellectuals and here's one who helps uncover magicks lost to entire ages of chroniclers, and...

_Lathenil. Please don't take this the wrong way. But I just don't think you're fully recovered from the daedra yet. You're filled with so much fear. Give it time._

But he knew there would never be a time where she had confidence in the soundness of his mind again.

"I... don't believe my words helped matters."

Melthis bit her lip, then shook her head as though to dislodge the topic like a horsefly. "Plenty of progress, though, all the same. All right, intelligence, infiltration, yes. I'll go first. Aside from the forums – they think I'm flattered; they'll try and get me to do favors soon, I think – I'm spending a lot of time in the alchemy lab. You wouldn't believe the interest they have in poisons, some of them."

"Assassination," said Lathenil coldly. "Who?"

"Nobody. No, I don't know who, but it's not assassination, it's more subtle than that. Suggestibility, feeblemindedness – well, they always do talk about playing a long game. But the talk's about humans, beastmen, Dunmer – and the wine glasses of _their_ notables are a bit far for the Thalmor to reach."

Character assassination, then. In a way that was worse. By the time they were through, they had charged Rynandor with knowingly sending soldiers to die in Oblivion, the better to shore up his own position. Even when they caught up to Rynandor, even if these new plots never came to fruition, the struggle for the truth would be far from over. No doubt Varellis and his ilk would rekindle the debate in any case – no, not in any case, only in the case of a future Summerset that brooked unorthodox opinions at all. Let the historians of tomorrow bicker and fabricate.

"Shasten?" prodded Melthis.

"Nothing to tell, but I've taken up shop with a very good enchanter," said Shasten. "If the Thalmor want weapons, staves, I'll be among the first to know. And I'll know something of their intended tactics, too."

Andrathel, satisfied Shasten was finished, bent down to his satchel and produced a roll of thick paper. With a flourish, he produced three thick sheets.

The first was a map of Tamriel, recognizable though oddly rendered by his sketchy style. There was a color gradation of the provinces, and not by boundaries. Skyrim and Cyrodiil were marked red, though they bordered. Summerset was green. Everything else lay somewhere in between, if you went by the spectrum.

The next was a list of titles – sketched from the way the list lay on the table rather than simply memorized; that was Andrathel for you – headed PROSCRIBED MATERIALS. There was plenty of what they'd consider anti-mer propaganda, and there were scattered books on Oblivion and the Dawn Era. Oddly, the Imperial Cult seemed to warrant special attention regardless of connection to either.

The last was a dungeon cell. Apparently unused, but plainly designed and equipped for torture.

"Where did you see all this?" said Melthis in a hushed voice.

"Courtesy of the Lady Arranelya's estate," said Andrathel with a rakish grin.

Fiorana frowned. "There's no way you had official access. And I don't see the unofficial option being readily available, not with the sort of money she has."

"Well," he said sheepishly, "I did have help diverting attention from the inner chambers."

"Help," said Lathenil flatly. "Bi'drasha?"

Andrathel, failing to sense the shaky ground he was walking on, only shrugged bashfully. "I don't have any better connections, do you?"

Lathenil jerked to his feet and advanced on the artist's position. "Two rules about accomplices, Andrathel. Two clear rules! They can't know you're targeting the Thalmor – and you can't involve anyone who isn't Aldmeri! Do you think this is a _game? _Do you honestly believe that if they caught her, they'd mess about with legal niceties? Gods' blood, you've sketched the accommodations yourself!"

Andrathel winced toward his shoes and ran a nervous hand through his inky, rough-cut hair. "They didn't. That's all I can say in my defense."

"Is that all?" demanded Fiorana. "Aren't any of us going to consider the value of what he got us? Melthis said it – it may not be a lark, but it _is _a game: a _long _game. If we shorten the game, we shorten the odds, I say."

"We'll use what we've obtained," said Lathenil shortly. "But the policy stands. We will not be compromised, and we will make no needless sacrifices. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," whispered Andrathel.

"Well!" said Shasten after a moment, in artificially conversational tones. "What about Fiorana?"

Fiorana sighed. "I've tried bringing the matter to the Psijic Order. Bloody waste of time, though. They served Artaeum during the Anguish, all right, but anything short of the end of the world, and their approach is so careful and subtle as to be insubstantial."

Melthis cleared her throat. "A lot to consider, then. But – given what we have on the main objective – I think it's about time we decided which of us goes. Should we go by who's uncovered the best intelligence, or whom we can spare, or – well, whoever goes is going to be less lucky than the rest of us, or more, if we're not lucky, or – oh, bother, it'll be a different fate than the rest of us, anyway. We'll have to consider it carefully. Unless we want to risk casting lots?"

"Please," laughed Fiorana. "There's no need for that. Think, now: which one of us is thoroughly incapable of keeping their sympathies a secret when pressed?"

Shasten cuffed Lathenil's shoulder. "Sounds like you've been drafted, mate."

Lathenil strode to the picture window, put the curtain aside a touch. He looked on the cascades of greenery, the graceful, sinuous houses of outer Sunhold, the radiant violet of a clear evening. To leave his homeland behind- sell his family holdings to strangers, and resign the only family remaining to him to Beridor's flatteries- yet if he did not, then he saw little prospect of a Summerset worth the name of homeland.

Only for a time, he vowed. He would return, and Rynandor the Bold with him. And Cilandrin would surely heed the greatest general of the Summerguard.

"I accept the task," he said. "There'll be time enough to hammer out the details. For now – Andrathel, you're nearest the wine shelf – a toast. To Rynandor's return, to the preservation of Summerset."

"_Rynandor and Summerset!"_

Author's Note: I'm not happy with this chapter, but it does establish plenty of key points, so up it goes whether I'm satisfied or not. Next chapter should be considerably swifter in coming, as most of it's been written already. The chapter title is a classical reference containing the word "shores" - bragging rights to anyone who can guess the rest of it.


	5. Exult, O Shores

_Then speak to me true, 'neath this untroubled sky:_

_What tribute would you have me honor you by?_

Mirabelle Monet didn't think much of Caenlorn's voice, truth be told. It was thin and reedy – like Chancellor Ocato's, actually; perhaps that was why he was playing Dragon in this heraldic duet, but if so, it was a poor decision. Ocato had never precisely been a byword for bardlike charisma.

Of course, half the Flowing Bowl was gathered around to listen regardless. They probably would have done even without the guest of honor to anchor them.

_In truth, at that threshold no foe gathered near..._

Now, no complaints about Astia Inventius as Wolf. Astia's voice was deep and full-throated, carrying both beauty and a martial quality.

Last Seed not even come again, and she was already a critic. Perhaps if the first songs to be bandied about hadn't been such slapdash work... but no, if the Deadlands no longer preoccupied her as they once did, it was a good thing no matter the cause.

Never mind. Find Maenlorn and work out the deal. With sea trade as scanty as it was, she couldn't afford to be undercut.

"Ah- excuse me," said a voice behind her – a rather stunted Altmer with sea-hardened garments; crewman of the _Highcrown_, no doubt, though the rest who hadn't gone off down the Gold Road were sticking fast to the vessel. "You look as though you know the people in these parts. Who is that old man watching the bards?"

_Then I must entreat that you turn all your power_

_To the hour of the king, for the king of the hour!_

The harmony wasn't bad either, for all that Astia and Caenlorn sang on about the same scale.

"That," said Mirabelle, eyeing this likely patron, "is Ilav Dralgoner." _He_ was giving the bards his undivided attention, certainly. She couldn't tell with accuracy from this angle, but it seemed as though the miserable old buffer was too occupied to be bitter and acerbic for once.

"Sorry, but I don't know who that is."

Fair enough. The way the guests were standing about Ilav like a festival fire – something to be near, but not to touch – showed his importance to anyone who paid attention. "He was Primate in the Great Chapel of Akatosh. Kvatch, you know. Just been called to the special Elder Council – to be frank, I hope it drags on a bit, so that he can go back to Kvatch when it's done. He's been helping to transition _our _Great Chapel, but he doesn't understand the way of Dibella at all, at all."

The sailor nodded, seeming satisfied with the explanation but disappointed that it didn't go the way he liked. "Not much of an authority on the harbor, then?"

"Oh! Is _that _what you're looking for! Mirabelle Monet, proprietor of the _Foc'sle_, at your service – and incidentally, most rumors you may have heard about my service are _entirely _accurate."

The Altmer didn't appear interested in that part of the offer – pity that so many elves were so choosy – but there was something that made his eyes go black with excitement all the same. "Then – about the detention of exiles from the provinces –"

_And the shout from the mountain rings out to the Tower:_

_'Tis the hour of the king, and the king of the hour!_

They began the interlude, Caenlorn on the flute and Astia on the drums.

"Well, that much isn't exactly my area. I'd ask at the prison if I were you."

"Would it be your area to know what vessels have arrived and when?"

"I don't know offhand, usually, but I maintain good records. But –" This whole conversation was quite out of the common way, and Mirabelle's interest was piqued. "_Highcrown_, aren't you? The diplomatic vessel? Surely someone aboard would have known-"

A Nordic woman toward the makeshift stage, who had been inclining an ear toward what looked like a cutting mutter from Father Ilav, turned about and yelled, "Ilav Dralgoner of Kvatch wants the whole lot of you to _shut up!_"

If he'd said that in so many words, Mirabelle knew he was perfectly willing to tell them himself. But the effect was immediate and universal.

In the silenced inn, Astia and Caenlorn's voices rang out as one.

_All haste to the City, all trust to his claims,_

_His mantle borne true to rekindle the flames!_

_So proud a procession – so widely renowned –_

_Thus swift comes the onslaught, that he not be crowned._

_All strength to the Temple, we shall yet prevail –_

_Nay, so tattered the world that no strength can avail._

_Gaze now on our downfall, that walks our own ground,_

_Now all that we are for destruction is bound –_

_Yet arises the Dragon, that death shall not lower,_

Caenlorn: _In the hour of the king-_

Astia: _Who was king but that hour._

Mirabelle hadn't noticed until now, but the strange Altmer seemed ill – pale, shaking – clammy, too, by the looks of it. She opened her mouth to ask after him, but he silenced her with a forceful wave of his hand.

The tempo grew mournful and reflective. Caenlorn began the alternation.

_The throne he was made for, though scarcely he knew-_

_His tongue was of silver, but only spoke true-_

_The guide to the threshold no hell's fire might pass-_

_'Twas he, only he, earned the wolf-and-cuirass-_

_In gold and in glory our triumph he led-_

_He walked the dark paths he'd bear none else to tread-_

_In truth, at his passing, the grief would be great_

_If the span of his years were one hundred and eight,_

_But ne'er in that time would be equaled the flower_

_Of the hour of the king, of the reign of an hour._

Perhaps it was the looming specter of the council, but for the first time she'd even imagined such a thing, Father Ilav was actually driven to tears. The little Altmer, meanwhile, seemed halfway to fainting. "What is this?" he asked hoarsely.

"I'm afraid I don't understand – if you might be able to pay for a potion, I-"

He shook his head erratically. "I mean to ask, what is the topic of this song?"

Mirabelle blinked. "Er, well, you did hear it fairly well, didn't you? That is, when I told you about Ilav Dralgoner-"

"You told me he was an important clergyman with the power to advise the Elder Council, and I thought that was reason enough for respect! What has he got to do with – with-"

The poor elf wasn't ill after all. He really didn't _know_. "By the Nine, where have they been _keeping_ you?"

He smiled wanly. "The Summerset Isles."

"Oh," said Mirabelle, realizing. "The storms – and then the embargo – but I didn't think-"

"The embargo," he gasped. "By all the gods, I-" He closed his eyes. "I'll need to see these shipping records. At once."

"Not just yet," said Mirabelle regretfully. "I have something to see to. Maenlorn, the proprietor here, is undercutting my business – quite rude of him, as my share of the market is narrower to begin with."

"Ah... Are you saying that because the diplomatic contingent stayed here rather than at the _Foc'sle?_"

"Well, yes. Why do you ask?"

"If I were you," said the Altmer in an undertone, "I'd consider that it may be because Maenlorn is a mer and you are not. Listen – I beg you not to repeat anything that passes between us. My life may depend on it."

Mirabelle chuckled. "Easily arranged. I may kiss and tell, but that makes it all the easier to keep the rest confidential." And it took a _very _seasoned sailor to surpass the pleasure Mirabelle got from hoarding a good secret.


End file.
